“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
― The Art of War
Mural, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Fall Like a Thunderbolt
Tag Archives: Art
Shifting Landscapes
“Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one’s own being. The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, and cut it’s way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love.”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Shifting Landscapes, Shawn Saumell
Shifting Landscapes, Shawn Saumell
In November, on a bike-ride version of the Cedars Open Studio tour we stopped at an exhibition called Hyperlocal, by The MAC. There was a lot of good stuff there – but one in particular stood out. It was by Shawn Saumell and was called Shifting Landscapes. A small diorama of dried moss and flowers sat on a pedestal. An IV bag hung from the ceiling – slowly and steadily pouring out, not liquid, but a stream of sand. This was building up on the tiny landscape until, eventually, it would drown it in dryness.
Pretty cool stuff.
The Mad Were Often Allowed To Mingle Freely
“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”
― Ham on Rye
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Feathered With One Of the Eagles Own Plumes
“The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.”
―
Bird sculpture in process, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Take Me Out Of This Dull World
“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― The Land of Heart’s Desire
Mural in back of Sandwich Hag, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Bristlecone
“There is a tree in California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine that was found, after an intensive ring count, to be five thousand and sixty-five years old.
Even to me, that pine seems old. In recent years, whenever I have despaired of my condition and needed to feel a bit more mortal and ordinary, I think of that tree in California. It has been alive since the Pharaohs. It has been alive since the found of Troy. Since the start of the Bronze Age. Since the start of yoga. Since mammoths.
And it has stayed there, calmly in its spot, growing slowly, producing leaves, losing leaves, producing more, as those mammoths became extinct,… the tree had always been the tree.”
― How to Stop Time
Mural outside of Sandwich Hag, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Got Those Deep Ellum Blues
If you go down to Deep Elem
Just to have a little fun,
You’d better have your fifteen dollars
When the policeman come.Chorus:
Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got the Deep Elem Blues;
Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got the Deep Elem Blues.If you go down to Deep Elem,
Keep your money in your shoes;
The women in Deep Elem
Got those Deep Elem blues.If you go down to Deep Elem,
Take your money in your pants;
The women in Deep Elem
Never give the men a chance.Now I once knew a preacher,
Preached the Bible through and through,
He went down into Deep Elem,
Now his preaching days are through.Now I once had a sweet gal,
Lord, she meant the world to me;
She went down into Deep Elem;
She ain’t what she used to be.Her papa’s a policeman
And her mama walks the street;
Her papa met her mama
When they both were on the beat.—-Deep Elm Blues (Deep Ellum Blues), Traditional
Jerry Lee Lewis sings the “Deep Elm Blues“. This was an unissued take made in the Sun Studios (lyrics and audio from wikisource).
Deep Ellum Poster, by Brad Albright, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
I saw this poster hanging on telephone poles in Deep Ellum honoring some of that spot’s musical history:
Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson
The poster is by Brad Allbright (website, instagram)
I have a piece of original art by him, bought at the Kettle Art Gallery’s For the Love of Kettle event.
Painting #1 – by Brad Allbright
A Physical Book is Like a Shark
“I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle showed up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there wil always be a place for them.”
―
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
To See is To Devour
“Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.”
― Les Misérables
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
There Are Gooseberries
“Country life has its advantages,’ he used to say. ‘You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good. . . and there are gooseberries.”
― Gooseberries
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 